It did seem like a good post to leave off on--somewhat serious and dignified, and a bit moody.

I often draw Skunk Boy acting like a buffoon and I feel like I've ruined him as a character by doing so, as nobody takes him seriously anymore it seems.

There's a bit of a backstory to that, that I've put out there on a few separate occasions but it might be time to include it in a description of art of him again sometime... I actually designed Skunk Boy back in 2010 as a sort of self-parody character, an embodiment for a lot of self-doubt and self-loathing I was feeling at the time especially surrounding my interest in cartoon animals (and my weird urge to draw them wearing diapers sometimes) and how I felt like it was really holding me back in many ways (this was before I was posting anywhere online, and I was just a NEET a few years out of high school basically being my parents' live-in housekeeper and babysitter and my dad's caretaker as he was sick).

So, I designed a character to embody all of that--a fat, dorky human awkwardly cosplaying a skunk because nobody likes skunks. And he farted a lot. At the time, he was meant to be fully human, and wearing cheap costume accessories as a rough approximation of looking like a skunk. Only later on did I decide to make him a hybrid human/skunk character, at which point I decided to leave the skunk accessories on because, living among humans, it was probably better for him to come across as some weirdo just cosplaying as a skunk, than some sort of hybrid with a functional skunk butt--this way, other humans would just assume he was a weirdo and his tail was a costume accessory as well, and with how realistic it looks, probably where he sunk his entire furry cosplay budget so he has to resort to dollar-store Halloween costume parts to complete the look.

As for adding a white stripe to his hair, part of the absence of that has to do with the origin of his design, of course, but just as much of it is avoiding cliches. I see other skunk boy hybrid types around and the majority of them either have black hair with white stripes, or just white hair. It makes him stand out a bit to just be some fat ginger, I think, although if he ever goes through a legit punk, goth, or emo phase I might give him a white stripe.

The Skunkdog form is another odd addition to his lore, I originally just designed a mutant were-skunk fursona thing on a whim in 2013 I think, and then decided it could be his were-form as an afterthought--aside from being a skunk monster very little changes about his personality or behavior, though. As for why he wouldn't just remain in that form to fit in better with the anthropomorph population, there are a few reasons. One being the horns--not only do they still make him look like a mutant and therefore still make him stand out as "different", but they get in the way of daily life. Imagine how often they would bump into the top of door frames as he walks through the house (if he forgets to duck down a bit, which he would, and even ducking down every time he changes rooms would get annoying after a while), and it would be nearly impossible to use any vehicle that's not some sort of convertible or otherwise open-topped... and then they might get in the way while sleeping, bumping into and scratching up the headboard of the bed and the wall behind the bed!
There's another story-related reason too--while Tex really likes his beast form and they can and do spend time together while transformed (she's a were-coyote so she feels more comfortable with her transformed state around a fellow shape-shifter), she does prefer the dorky humanoid Skunk Boy she fell in love with.

Now that I think about it, maybe they should cosplay Beauty and the Beast sometime, assuming people would be okay with a fat Hispanic redneck half-coyote Belle with freckles and the Beast being a fat dorky redneck skunk monster.